"Don't I?" a wistful pain in his dark eyes. "Dear little sister Lulu, how I long to see her I cannot tell you! But why hasten her? She is coming shortly anyhow. She may be in time to see me; if not, we still shall meet again some time. She will come to me." "Don't talk that way," she says, in distress and pain. "You will get better as soon as this fever breaks." "Or worse," he amends. "You know a crisis must come then, Mrs. Winans, whether for better or worse, we cannot now tell. But we all know--you, mother, and the doctor, though you try to hide it from me--that the indications point to the worst. Yesterday, I had slight hemorrhage from the lungs again." "Don't talk so," she pleads again. "How can any of us--the doctor, even--tell what will be the result of the crisis? We hope for the best. Do you not remember how ill I was in Washington with brain fever, and how Lulu would not let them shave off my long curls? No one thought I would recover, yet I did. So, I trust, will you." "Yes, if it so please God; but I think, Mrs. Winans, that He is going to be very merciful, and take me to Himself." "Going to be very merciful," she repeats, with a grave wonder in her large eyes, as at something new and strange. She cannot at all understand how this quiet heart that has always seemed to her so untouched by any great joy or grief, can be so eagerly content in going "home." "Why, you do not want to die so young. The world needs good men like you so much that God will not take you yet! Why, what can you mean?" "Just this, Mrs. Winans," he lifts his honest gray eyes to her fair face--his fever is falling, and he seems quite cool, though earnest--"that God, when he puts a life-long sorrow on our hearts, usually compensates for it by giving us a brief span in which to endure it. Sorrow like yours, that may be turned into joys again, He lets us live to bear. Crosses like mine, that may be blessing, but never joy, He lets one lay down early at the foot of the Great White Throne." Sweeping lashes shade her cheeks to hide her great surprise. She asks nothing of Captain Clendenon's cross, though till now she has never dreamed of its existence. "Some lost love," she guesses, with ready sympathy in her heart, and answers, sadly: "Sorrows like mine can never turn into joys, _mon ami_." "They can, they will," he cries, in glad excitement. "I know, I feel, that one of your lost ones, at least, will be restored to you." "Oh! what can you mean?" In eager hope she rises, looking down at him with eyes that would fain read the secret he had almost betrayed. "Sit down," he answers, in calmer tones, "and forgive me for startling you so. I only meant that I felt like this, dear friend; and I do feel as if the shadows are passing from your life, and that, ere long, all will be well with you. It is given sometimes, you know, to dying eyes to see very clearly."